Posted
by
Unknown Lameron Wednesday April 24, 2013 @01:15PM
from the we're-all-gonna-die dept.

ananyo writes "With Taiwan announcing the first case of H7N9 avian flu outside mainland China, researchers have revealed how the virus may spread in China — and beyond. The projections use risk maps developed for human infection by another, well-established avian flu — H5N1. Indeed, when human cases of H7N9 are overlaid on a risk map, they appear to fall within the highest risk areas for H5N1. The map suggests that high-risk areas for H7N9 might include Shandong province (where the first case was reported 23 April) and a belt extending around the Bohai sea to Liaoning province in the north. Though there has been no evidence of sustained human-to-human spread of H7N9 so far, researchers have analyzed airline passenger data for China. Eastern China — the epicenter of the current the H7N9 outbreak — is one of the world's busiest hubs for airline traffic. From the Nature story: 'A quarter of the global population outside of China lives within two hours of an airport with a direct flight from the outbreak regions, and 70% if a single connecting flight is included.'"

Every respiratory and er bad in Portland alone was completely full. If there has been literally 1 more case, they would have been turned away,and in all likely hood would have been another death..

Yes LITERALLY.

A lot of people died, but we cut it off. Yes jerkwads show up saying how it was nothing because they are ignorant SOBs.Epidemic hits:"WHY DIDN'T YOU DO SOMETHING!!!"epidemic averted through hard word: "YOU DID ALL THAT FOR NOTHING!!!!"

I just really do not like Wolf. He is a complete waste of a human being and a super sucky "news person".

Don't you just love the way he pretends to be a serious journalist while he's engaging in shameless ratings grabs, as if keeping a stoic face somehow makes his network's panic-mongering and opportunistic exploitation of every event-of-the-moment into responsible reporting?

Well, until the disease resolves in China, let's just ban them from landing outside their country. In this day in age, telecommuting and teleconferences negate much of any need to visit in person anyway.

People are remembering how previous, highly publicised breakouts turned out to be minor. At least globally.They forget the immense effort by WHO and similar to prevent the outbreaks from becoming pandemics. SARS and N1H1 both were contained. Partially because they weren't as deadly as first thought, but definitely also due to enforced measures.

This new one, by all indications is no spring flu. This one kills, and if it does start spreading between humans directly, we are in trouble.

At least it'll probably help solve the global overpopulation problem rather efficiently.

This new one, by all indications is no spring flu. This one kills, and if it does start spreading between humans directly, we are in trouble.

Yeah, that's what they said about H5N1, and a million different viruses and diseases that were the disease-of-the-moment before that, going back decades (remember the Russian Flu, anyone?). A bunch of epidemiologists get a lot of grant money, news channels get some ratings from the disease-of-the-moment, the public overreacts like they always do, much bullshit is spoken, and a year or two later it's on to the next goddamned thing that's going to KILL US ALL!

Sanitation doesn't have a goddam thing to do with the spread of influenza. It is spread by human breath - so unless you consider getting the entire population to wear N95 respirators as a sanitation advance, then there are no sanitation improvements that will matter a whit against an influenza pandemic. And our understanding of viruses, while it has progressed greatly, has still not yielded one measure other than vaccinations (which are not a possible solution should this one go pandemic any time soon) t

And before you cite 1918 (as is ALWAYS cited in these pandemic scares), spare me. This isn't an era of shitty sanitation, poor understanding of viruses, awful medical treatment, and scores of people living in overcrowded tenements with no sewers and in crowded WWI-era military encampments.

Yeah, because I know when the regular seasonal flu comes around no one ever gets it. Never spreads at all.

Come on man. There's not some magical technology field that prevents diseases from spreading. Noravirus can spread to 100 people before the first carrier even knows their sick (my sister's wedding ended up with virtually every guest spending the next day in the bathroom). Schools regularly close down when the flu gets out of hand (twice when I was in high school when more than 50% of the student bod

No, I just use my common fucking sense. I look around in my city, see that people aren't dropping like flies, and go on with my life--the same as every other rational, non-Chicken-Little, non-paranoid-nutcase out there. But if you want to panic, build a bunker, go on the news warning people to all stay home cause WESSA ALL GONNA DIE!!!!!!!! then go right ahead, buddy.

And I don't think it's a scam, per se. It's just more self-serving scare tactic bullshit from the CDC and its ilk. But you keep telling yourse

No, but there is a big difference between making rational plans for a general pandemic at some point in the future and making specific, overexaggerated claims about a specific virus that will only lead to irrational panic, especially when the claims are coming from an organization (the CDC) with a vested financial interest in inducing fear and a very long history of making these sorts of proclamations.

People are remembering how previous, highly publicised breakouts turned out to be minor. At least globally.

People are also remembering how influenza epidemic scares drive up sales of flu vaccines, which I'm sure is something the manufacturers and retailers of those vaccines really hate and is entirely coincidental.

Sure, the swine flu didn't send revenue skyrocketing, but it was some nice extra bacon that far exceeded what most companies would have gotten for just the seasonal flu. For instance, AstraZeneca's pandemic sales were more than 2.5 times that of its seasonal FluMist vaccine; Glaxo[SmithKlein] quadrupled the revenue seen for its seasonal vaccines Fluarix and FluLaval.

There's definitely a correlation between flu scares and sales of flu vaccine, as every source I looked at specifically mentioned swine flu as a driver of vaccination recommendations.

My take: There's a real problem here, but it's blown way out of proportion. The flu vaccine manufacturers have every reason in the world to make it sound like "We're all gonna die! Panic! Get vaccinated right away!" when what actually happens is that the people who die tend to be elderly or otherwise already sick, wh

You, and apparently the motley fool, are completely ignorant on who flu vaccines are paid for and handled.

"when what actually happens is that the people who die tend to be elderly or otherwise already sick"WRONG fuck twad. The last influenza epidemic killed health people as well...while healthy adults fight it off pretty easily.Wrong ag.. you know what? fuck you and fuck slashdot. AS some who spends time around world experts in this field I can say you are wrong. You are ignorant beyond belief. I can sit

"Easily fight it off"--Yeah right. SARS killed healthy people *because* of their strong immune response! A new virus can cause a very strong reaction from the immune system and you can die from the over-reaction and subsequent effects on your systems, especially the respiratory system.

It's probably because there are more mutagenic compounds floating around than in the past. The things that cause genetic damage (e.g. cancer) and whatnot in animals can accelerate mutation in single cell organisms, but with their short life cycles and higher populations, it increases the likelihood of something positive being blundered into (and then thriving).

I'm not sure if natural selection norms apply to viruses since they are not independent living organisms. They may very well be limited by the, for lack of a better term, 'bandwidth' of the host cells, and mutagenic compounds may reduce those limitations. Obviously I'm neither a geneticist nor microbiologist, so I could be quite wrong in my intuition about the matter.

It's probably because there are more mutagenic compounds floating around than in the past.

Or, it's been happening all the time and we didn't know it? I still don't think that you can match the exposure of workers in, say, 1800's when they've been in close contact with all sorts of nasty chemicals without any protection equipment. And before that, medical science and statistics practically didn't exist at all. It's just that we're studying health issues with much closer scrutiny of facts than ever before in recorded history.

And out of the 30,000-60,000 deaths that normally result from the flu, 773 is a very small number (1.25%-2.5%). Given that there are about 4-5 major strains of "active" flu every year, that means the "normal" flus each took out about 5,000-10,000 people and SARS only took out 773. So yeah, he may be using hyperbole, but he is accurate in his snide remarks.

SARS is/was more fatal strain, and it was prevented with quick and effective international response. I'm pretty sure people don't want SARS or any new strain to be as prevalently hanging around as common flu. The immune system is not used to it, and there's little reason to let the viruses go freely around and mingle with each other.

It's a bit morbid to compare the fatalities. I'd rather say that great, only 773. The lower the number the better the response has been.

And the reason that number is so small is due in no small part because effective planning on the part of WHO. I won't side with the ridiculous media on their stupid panic-ridden publications about disease, but modern social health programs are a miracle.

Thank you so much for your uninformed opinions. A pandemic, if you could be bothered to look it up, is a disease that spreads across large areas. It has nothing to do with how many die. SARS, H1N1, Swine Flu, et al are all pandemics.

OK, I'll look it up. According to Websters: "Pandemic: occurring over a wide geographic area and affecting an exceptionally high proportion of the population"I don't think any of those you listed fits the definition. Just saying.

I don't want to accuse you of cherry picking, but Wikipedia says it is a disease that covers a large geographic region, and says nothing about it having to affect a large proportion of the population. It also specifically says H1N1 is a pandemic in the first paragraph. Dictionary.com says pretty much the same thing. Just saying.

All of the pounding noises in your respective heads don't come from the researchers. It comes from all the Mountain Dew and Cheetos you are are mainlining.

The newspaper article was hardly inflammatory. The Nature summary was actually pretty balanced. What it is showing is that bird flu variants with bird - human transmission seem to be following a pattern. A pattern we might be able to use to our advantage should a real, virulent, pandemic strain show up. Like it did in the 1920's.

Time to lay off the stimulants, guys.

I like the fun fact that a significant population of the world is at contact risk should that occur through air travel. Six degrees of separation my ass....

Well, I'm not one for over-reacting, but there is a very serious threat of a pandemic happening. It's been well over 80 years since we had a really deadly outbreak and there wasn't mass transit like there is now. If we had an outbreak like that, today, it would be pretty devastating. I don't think there's much we can do about it other than invest heavily in more robust broad spectrum vaccines. If we're lucky, we'll find something before "The big one" strikes us. Of all the Crisis out there that the media bl

I actually had H1N1. (Doctor diagnosed.) It was quite unpleasant, but I was never really in any danger. There were deaths, mostly the usual people who die from the flu. The old, the young, those with compromised imune systems. The scairy thing about H1N1 was that it also killed people that were not very old, very young, or with AIDS.
My doctor told me, that most of the people were dieing from H1N1, and were not old, young, AIDS patinets, etc. were seriously overweight. This little fact didn't get much media

I had H1N1 as well. Not a walk in the park by any means - I was bedridden, fevered and delirious, for pretty much an entire week. I also developed a secondary infection, a weak form of pneumonia ("walking pneumonia") that had me hacking for over a month afterwards. A good two-thirds of everyone I worked with went down for a week as well. And these were people in their twenties - not infants or the elderly, like most flus.

I don't know the stats on mortality rate or anything, but IMO an epidemic that knoc

I've heard that the WHO is reporting 91 laboratory-confirmed human cases and 17 deaths in four Provinces and two Municipalities in China. Sounds real enough to me. I feel safe enough here on the Left Coast in Canada... but there's not much more I can do than wash my hands lots and drink more JD...
Some easy reading - http://www.phac-aspc.gc.ca/eri-ire/h7n9/risk_assessment-evaluation_risque-eng.php [phac-aspc.gc.ca]

Flu where the primary disease vector is bird to human transmission, generally chickens and ducks raised by the poor to be used as food but which live in close proximity to the owner. They also have a nasty habit of infecting migratory bird species and transmitting the infection to the local bird population along their routes. This is in contrast to those that are primarily spread through pigs (swine flu).

Whenever I read stories like this it reminds me of a Stephen King short story. I have forgotten the title, but I believe it is what he eventually developed into The Stand. Everyone is dying of a flu-like disease, and one of the characters is thinking that a big monolith should be constructed by the few humans left to inform any future alien visitors as to what happened to our civilization. Carved into the granite, it should simply read, "It was the flu."

I certainly hope that Sladhot has acquired "Independent.ie's express written consent" for linking to their article [independent.ie] in the scoop, as stipulated in the newspaper's online edition's Terms & Conditions [independent.ie]:

Hypertext links to this website by other users and websites are permitted provided that the link to this website is in a simple list of companies by pointing to Independent.ie's home page http://www.independent.ie. This limited licence entitles other users and websites to link to Independent.ie's home page only, and linking to other content on or information in this website is prohibited without Independent.ie's express written consent.

HA! I knew things were better in America, where chickens are separated by people and exposure to the majority of us comes through frozen, deep-fried chicken strips rather than on the bone, in the feather like in China.

Unsanitary condition that is covered by innoculating their birds with vaccines and tamiflu. Sadly, when it goes around the world, this will be damaging because the Chinese have already genetically selected the most lethal virus.

Modelling has a limited ability to help in Engineering. And modelling has no ability to provide data to any real scientific study.

It does not replace experimentation and real data. And its results should always be taken with a grain of salt. There is no way a model on the scale of human culture and global weather (or even local weather for that matter) can be trusted. The entropy cannot be accurately modelled by the system.

The normal flu is quite virulent, but outside of high risk groups, the mortality rate is also quite low. Not pleasant, but low mortality.

(IANAI - I Am Not An Immunologist) The dangers about these cross-over influenzas is that they tend have a higher-than-average kill rate for generally higher. With global transfer of diseases, a mortality rate of just 1% and infection rate of 10% of the global populate is still around 7 million people. Spanish flu in 1919 had a hit rate of between 2% and 20% (according to wikipedia). A *very* sobering number.

If we have a contagious, long incubation, high mortality virus hit the globe, we are in a very bad state. Any signal of a pandemic needs to be taken seriously.

Dear post-apocalyptic scientists,
I have the antibodies you seek. Time is short so I won't go into detail, but several years ago I caught a deadly strain of proto-flu from a stray cat. This would have been a death sentence for lesser men, but due to my viking DNA and a cocktail of immuno-boosting supplements, I survived. I've linked to my webpage in hopes that you will still be able to contact me once the human race begins to crumble. Failing that, you can find the entrance to my bunker atop the hill in my